“As long as it takes to do the job.”
Balenger gave the lantern to Amanda. He inhaled, exhaled, and inhaled again, drawing air deep into his lungs. Breath held, he raced into the cavern, ready to shoot if the dog attacked. Amanda charged behind him. They passed the tableaus and reached the wall of rubble. Balenger set down the gun and grabbed rock after rock, making a hole. His chest urged him to breathe. While Amanda directed the flashlight, he cleared more rocks. His lungs cramped, demanding air, but he kept working. When the hole was deep enough to hold the lantern, he set it inside and piled rocks over it, leaving a space for the fuse. Then he pulled out Ray’s lighter and flicked its wheel.
Earlier, he and Amanda had worried that a flame would ignite combustible gas in the tunnel, but the explosion that sealed the mine would probably have set off that kind of gas, Balenger decided. Although “probably” didn’t fill him with confidence, there wasn’t another choice — he was forced to take the risk. When the lighter flamed, he winced, anticipating an explosion. It didn’t happen. He lit the strip of cloth, grabbed the rifle, and hurried with Amanda toward the adjacent chamber.
Pain in his lungs compelled him to breathe before he got there. The smell of garlic made his stomach turn. Sensing the flicker of flame on the cloth behind him, he reached the adjacent chamber, heard Amanda gasp, and pulled her to him, taking shelter around the corner.
“Put your hands over your ears!” he reminded her. “Open your mouth!”
He held his breath again, desperate not to inhale the arsenic. One, two, three. Despite the pounding of his heart, time seemed to go slowly, like a video game in which the minute that elapsed in it was really two minutes in conventional time. Four, five, six.
Did the fuse go out? he wondered in a panic. Did the flame get smothered in the rocks? I don’t know if I can hold my breath long enough to relight it.
Maybe the lantern isn’t a bomb, he worried.
He was about to risk peering into the Sepulcher when a blast sent a concussion that felt like a punch. Dust and rocks fell from the roof. Despite Balenger’s precautions, the roar caused an agonized ringing in his ears. A rumble shook the chamber. It’s going to collapse, he thought, pulling Amanda closer. The rumble persisted, threatening to throw him to the floor. He held Amanda tight, leaning over her, determined to shelter her. Slowly, the vibration died. Rocks stopped falling. Forced to breathe, he tasted dust and garlic. Amanda turned the corner and scanned the flashlight into the Sepulcher.
A haze filled the cavern. Despite it, Balenger saw that the tableaus had been blown apart. A chaos of rags and wood chunks littered the floor. Mummies had turned into scattered bones. He and Amanda ran over them, again holding their breath, as the flashlight revealed an opening beyond the rubble. Balenger expected to see a sophisticated device heating the arsenic, but it was only a charcoal grill that was now overturned, remnants of glowing coals scattered across the floor. A yellow chunk of what Balenger assumed was arsenic lay next to them. He kicked it out of the way.
Reeling from the garlic smell, he found a door that the rubble had hidden. The explosion had blown it open, exposing a tunnel. A light glowed at its end. Taking Amanda’s arm, he lurched along it, desperate to get away from the nauseating, lethal smell.
They reached a door, above which a light bulb shone. But the door wasn’t wooden and gray with age. It was shiny metal.
Balenger reached for the knob, only to find that now it was Amanda who grabbed his hand.
“Don’t,” she said.
She pulled a rubber glove from her jumpsuit, explaining, “Where I woke up yesterday, the doors were electrified.”
She put on the glove and turned the knob, which moved freely. After pushing the door open, she dodged to the side so that Balenger could aim the rifle.
What they saw made them gape.
4
A huge, glowing area extended before them, giving off an electrical hum. The roof was vaulted stone while to the left, numerous levels of metal shelves supported long rows of computer monitors. Every screen was illuminated. They showed the valley, the drained reservoir, the mine entrance, the tunnel, the demolished Sepulcher, and the glowing area in which Balenger and Amanda stood. As Balenger walked along the monitors, he saw one that displayed the viewpoint of the camera on his headset. Another monitor displayed the viewpoint from Amanda’s headset. He saw an image of Balenger standing in profile twenty feet from her while the image he looked at on the monitor showed him in profile. The multiple levels of perception made him dizzy.
But what shocked him more than the expanse of the monitors and the ambitious scope of the surveillance was that none of the images on any of the countless screens had a conventional appearance. The valley, the reservoir, the mine entrance, the tunnel, the Sepulcher, the glowing control room, Balenger and Amanda — nothing was depicted in a so-called realistic way. Everything resembled a brightly colored cartoon.
“My God, we look like we’re in a video game,” Amanda said.
“Welcome to Scavenger.” The voice’s deep resonance filled their earphones.
Balenger turned to the right. There, numerous shelves supported a complex array of computer equipment that stretched for what might have been fifty yards. Above them, a glass wall provided a view of the monitors.
“You survived the final test,” the Game Master said. “You proved yourself worthy.”
“For what, you lying piece of shit?” Balenger shouted. Bathed in the glow of the cartoon colors, he had a partial view of the area behind the glass wall above him. A raised chair was near the glass. Its arms were equipped with numerous buttons and levers. Its occupant was short and slight with wispy, yellow hair and a tiny, wrinkled face that made Balenger think of a boy who had suddenly aged. Goggles reinforced the impression that he was a child.
“Frank!” Amanda yelled. “This monitor! Look how he sees us!”
Balenger turned toward where she pointed. On a screen, he saw the image that the Game Master received through his goggles. It was from a high angle, from the glassed-in observation area. It showed Balenger and Amanda staring toward the monitor, on which was an image of them staring toward the monitor. Again, Balenger’s mind reeled. His lightheadedness was intensified because on this monitor, too, he and Amanda were cartoons. It wasn’t just the surveillance cameras that depicted everything as a graphic in a video game. The goggles the Game Master wore turned everything he saw into a scene from a video game. Worse, Amanda’s swollen purple cheek and Balenger’s broken nose looked inconsequential in the cartoon. The blood on his clawed chest and duct-taped knee appeared merely colorful.
“We’re not cartoons!” Balenger screamed toward the boy-man in the control chair behind the glass wall.
He raised the Mini-14 and centered the holographic red dot on the tiny wrinkled face that wore goggles. When he fired, feeling the shock of the noise in the cavern, the bullet whacked against the glass but sent only a few specks flying. Balenger knew that most bullet-resistant glass could be defeated by placing five bullets in a five-inch circle. Again and again, he pulled the trigger, shell cases arcing, bullets fragmenting against the glass, but except for minor starring, the shots had no effect.
Furious, he spun toward the monitors that showed cartoon graphics of him and Amanda. He shot those monitors, destroying the video-game images that depicted him shooting the monitors. Sparks flew, chunks of plastic erupting.